Mistlehap
by alyseci5
Summary: "And how exactly did this tradition start?"  Alice/Hatter


**Pairing:** Alice/Hatter

**Warnings/Spoilers:** No warnings or spoilers.

**Disclaimer:** Property of SyFy, not me

**Author's Notes:** For skylar0grace, who wanted Alice/Hatter. Written for my **kissbingo **card square 'location: under the mistletoe'.

-o-

Hatter eyes the battered greenery hanging overhead with a certain amount of distrust, and it takes everything that Alice has not to roll her eyes.

"Explain it to me again," he says, and she swallows down a sigh.

"It's a tradition," she says patiently, counting to ten in her head. When his face doesn't clear, and he continues to stare at the green leaves and white berries as though they're about to leap out and eat his face, she starts counting again, but backwards this time.

"And how exactly did this tradition start?"

Alice opens her mouth and then closes it again abruptly. The truth is that she has no idea how the tradition started, and she doesn't miss Hatter's little gloating look of triumph at her continued silence.

"It doesn't matter how it started," she says, holding up one finger to silence him before he can start. "What matters is that it's a tradition and one you need to know about. You can't wander into Mom's Christmas party and not know about Christmas or holly or punch or mistletoe."

Hatter purses his lips thoughtfully. "I liked the punch," he says, "although I still don't know why you had to add all that froofy, fruity nonsense to good rum."

Alice closes her eyes and counts in her head again, to twenty this time. When she opens them again, Hatter is still standing there, just looking at her, and sometimes she swears that he does this sort of thing deliberately.

"So I have to kiss anyone if we end up standing together under this stuff?" Alice nods, thankful that she's finally getting through to him. "Even blokes?" Or maybe she's not.

Hatter stares at her expectantly and she swallows, thinking that if it's this difficult to explain **Christmas** to Hatter, with its presents and overindulgence and bright, shiny glitter that just **screams** Wonderland to her now that she's been there, she's not entirely sure how she's supposed to even get started on America's frequently confusing - and incredibly frustrating - attitude to sexual mores and anything 'alternative'.

"That depends on how much you had to drink," she says cautiously, and Hatter, thankfully, nods.

"Well, I can't say that I haven't indulged in a drop or two of bi-curious myself in my time," he says, and those words are enough to set Alice's own curiosity on fire.

But she takes a deep breath and focuses on the most immediate and pressing of topics - Hatter's little revelation is going to have to wait. "Do you get it now?"

"That stuff equals kissing. Weird little custom, but okay, if it makes you happy, Alice, my love." She breathes a sigh of relief. "Although..." Too soon, it seems, because it couldn't be that easy, of course. "I've got to say that in Wonderland, we don't wait for plants tell us whether or not we can snog."

Given how long it took him to kiss her for the first time, as observations go that's a little unfair, but Alice takes another deep breath and reaches inside herself, just as deeply, for the wells of patience she knows must be down there somewhere.

"We don't have to wait till we're standing under mistletoe in order to kiss someone," she says mildly.

"Really?" His eyes are dancing under his hat and she huffs out a little breath of laughter, both catching on to his teasing and getting caught up in the ridiculousness of this conversation.

"Really," she says, and he grins, his teeth wide and white in his face.

"So I could kiss you right here, right now? Even if there wasn't any mistle-whatsit overhead?" He reaches out and tugs her closer to him, his fingers tangling in the belt loop of her jeans.

She chuckles, a soft sound of happiness that is echoed in the smile on his face, and winds her arms around his neck. "Yes, you could. If you wanted to."

"Good," he says, tilting his face towards hers. She closes her eyes, readying herself of the kiss that is coming, and she isn't disappointed. "Because I was beginning to think that you'd never ask."

The end


End file.
